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Under "Origins" we read: "There was no sailing mast or propulsion, as they were bank-hauled by horses." @Andy Dingley: changed "as" to "so", arguing that horse towing was a result rather than cause of no mast. I reverted this change because I think the original reads better, and in the end there was no simple "Arrow of causation". The people who built the barges said: what's best for the Stroudwater, with its (fixed) bridges, as opposed to the Severn or the Sharpness canal? Horse towing was pretty standard on all the narrow canals of the midlands (I believe), so this would be chosen, and thus no mast required. But a couple of other points... What is this "...no propulsion"?? (No diesel engine in 1790?!) And there is no dating in the article at all, so it is hard to tie it in with other changes: presumably these barges were in use before the Sharpness canal was built (40+ years, 1780-1820 something). Imaginatorium (talk) 09:25, 3 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The barges came after the canal. From the beginning, the canal seems to have used the long-established Severn trows (and other vessels), which is why it was built rather wider than most other canals of this time. The trows of course were sailing vessels, but with a mast that could be lowered. AIUI, they sailed West of Stonehouse but East there were more bridges and less wind. With the mast down on much of the canal, they had to employ either men or horses - which for the visiting trows I think were supplied on a livery basis, unlike the more typical narrowboat haulage. Although the first trows were man-hauled when not sailing, the distance was too much men to work the whole canal and there was a shift to horse haulage as traffic increased, as combined sail and man hauling was more trouble, especially for working around other boats. The chronology and the causality is from masts to horses, not the other way (as it might be seen on other canals).
